


A Little Night Music

by mayamaia



Series: Maycury Week [1]
Category: Queen (Band)
Genre: Demanding Drunk Friends, Designated Driver who wasn’t even at the club, Drunken music making, Grand Theft Auto but not really, I just realized how great these tags would be when making them, M/M, cathedral, drunk friends, it was warranted
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:02:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26209138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayamaia/pseuds/mayamaia
Summary: Maycury Week day 1: Hot Space era, Freddie’s drunk and calls Brian to get him
Relationships: Brian May/Freddie Mercury
Series: Maycury Week [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1906696
Comments: 15
Kudos: 36
Collections: Maycury_Week_2020





	A Little Night Music

It was a burst of inspiration: Brian had realized that, despite habits and accusations of being a stick in the mud, he didn’t actually have to go to the club with the others tonight. So he was alone; Freddie and John and Roger… Mack and Paul and Crystal, everybody... had gone out to dance, or to lure people off the dance floor, or to get a little bit high or a lot drunk, or all of the above, and so Brian was free, for one night, to spend alone with his thoughts.

A terrible idea, really.

He kept either running over the day’s half-hearted efforts - nobody really seemed to care enough to fight things out anymore, they just ran through a few measures and stopped when the clubs opened, leaving Mack and Brian to complete the mixes with a third of the takes - or fighting the mental image of Freddie on the dance floor, moving in patterns familiar from a hundred performances, but against another body without a guitar.

Brian was startled by the telephone. It was far too late to be his wife, unless one of the kids… shit.

Snatching the receiver, he answered in a rush, “Hello…?”

“Bri! Brian! Darling, I am so very fucked up, how are you? No, wait, **you** need to not be. Are you?”

“Freddie?”

“Excellent! code sober, come get me, Bri.” Freddie’s voice was hardly slurred, but ran quickly phrase to phrase, piled fast one on another. He sounded cheerful, at least.

Brain squeezed his eyes shut. He’d have a headache in a moment. “What - Freddie, you have a driver.”

“No, I don’t, he’s at the club,” Freddie said impatiently.

Yes, definitely a headache, he could feel the first flickers of it already. “Where are you, Fred?”

“Ohhh,” Freddie said, thoughtfully, and hummed like he was looking around. “Oh, there’s a church, darling! Grand old thing. I wonder if there’s a door open? I’ll go check!” There was a clatter as if Freddie had put the receiver down on the top of the phone without hanging it up, and then wind.

“Freddie? Fred?” Brian kept his eyes shut as he waited a long minute, and then heard a dial tone as the change Freddie had put in was used up. “Marvelous,” Brian growled to himself.

He took a deep breath, dropped his head into his hands and tried to think of what Freddie had said. If he’d left the driver at the club, he must be within walking distance - likely a drunkard’s walk at random - of wherever they’d gone out. And within close sight of a church? An old one, a large one?

Oh! Brian raised his head. The Munich cathedral was very close to the Sugar Shack! Worth trying, at any rate. Now to get there properly… Brian could hear Roger’s voice in his head, mocking him for not bringing a car because he had thought it unnecessary. But Freddie had his driver, Roger and John had their cars… That was it! John would just have to forgive him.

He grabbed one of the spare keys off his hotel dresser and hurried down to let himself into John’s room. With luck - there, the keys to John’s Volvo.

Brian stopped for only a few seconds at the hotel desk, to leave a message in case the others called or returned before he and Freddie did, and drove swiftly to the Frauenkirche.

* * *

Brian found a parking spot, eyeing the round towers and peaked roof of the old edifice with a weariness that owed little to the late hour. As he made his way towards it, he tried to watch for movement, or for a slim body leaning against the stonework down the surrounding streets and alleyways.

But as he neared the building, he heard piano notes dancing inside the nave, tunefully but almost at random. Thankful, but still wanting to groan in irritation, he went straight to it and began looking for doors.

The open door was on the side, hidden at the back for priests and so forth to make their ways in and out. It opened first into the space behind the altar, but Brian followed the music to find Freddie in the semi-dark, the only lamp shining over the pulpit, not over the instrument that held Freddie’s attention.

“Alright Freddie?” Brian said in a lull, and Freddie looked up at once, without startling.

“Oh here she comes now! Mrs May, I knew you wouldn’t let me down, darling.”

Brian shuffled up to him. The wind outside toyed with the roof’s edges and made an uneasy whistling sound. Freddie turned on the piano bench, kicking a leg over it to end in a sort of oddly half-cross legged position, leaning his elbow back against the piano lid, perched in a sort of precarious arc over the keys.

“Er, Fred…”

“Brian, what brings you to this glorious venue?” Freddie said with an elegant sweep of his free arm to encompass the nave.

Brian opened his mouth, then closed it and huffed a sigh. “You called me, Freddie.”

“Yes I did! But you didn’t join us for the dancing earlier, and yet here you are! In an instant! Practically.” He leapt up from the bench, leaned in close to Brian, and not moving away, tilted his head up and said, “You don’t smell like you ran that whole long way. Who’d you shanghai into service, who drove you here?”

Brian kept his mouth shut. He had only borrowed Deaky’s car, it’s not like he stole it. “I’m here myself. Now come on…”

“And cut short our wonderful evening, no!” Freddie flopped onto the bench again, saying with absurd dignity, “I may be fucked but I can still play the piano!”

With that, he swung into a tune that sounded as drunk as he was, and Brian almost recognized it before Freddie started to sing along, in his very best Liverpudlian accent:

“...da na da da, it’s driving me mad, it’s driving me mad…”

“Oh no, Freddie…”

“I want you. I want you so bad...”

Brian dropped his face into his hand. “Freddie you are SO drunk.”

“It's driving me mad, It's driving me mad. She's so…” Freddie swayed as he played the bridge, like he was being buffeted by a great wind. The notes echoed hollowly around the nave, almost giving an impression of the guitar effects that ought to have been there. “...Heavy! Heavy, heavy heavy!”

Brian began to shake his head and laugh, then looked up. “Come on, Freddie,” he said, moving to take Freddie’s shoulders and encourage him to get up.

Freddie moved with him, but started to sing the instrumental bits instead, “Da nanana da nana, she's so Da da da Da da da Da da da Da da da Heavy!” with what seemed to be a brief attempt at a waltz step in the middle. His voice rang off the pillars, growing to a blur of sound that Brian couldn’t help but admire as he managed to steer Freddie back to the door behind the altar and out into the night again.

As they made their way into the streets, the wind driving Brian’s hair into his eyes, Freddie tripped over another Beatles song before settling on Dusty Springfield. As they came in sight of the car, however, he stopped singing to start laughing raucously.

“That’s John’s car, oh you thief!”

Brian opened Freddie’s door and made sure he was seated properly before answering, “I’m taking care of you, it’s warranted.”

Freddie just kept laughing, and added synonyms as they came to him.

“Pilferer!”

“Larcenist!’

“Hijacker, that one’s apropos, darling… highwayman!”

Brian tried not to laugh along as they passed down city streets that shone orange and red in the lamplight, wending their way back to the hotel.


End file.
